1. Field of Invention
The current invention relates to non-invasive imaging systems and methods, and more particularly to imaging systems and methods that provide computer assisted diagnosis of tissue abnormalities in human and animal subjects.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Conventional radiological diagnosis can be qualitative or subjective. Even though quantitative analyses may significantly improve our ability to detect and characterize abnormalities, currently almost no quantitative techniques can be accepted as a part of routine radiological diagnosis. This is partly due to difficulties in analyzing tissue regions based on radiological, such as Magnetic Resonance (MR), images. For example, a considerable amount of manual labor (typically 2-4 hours of tedious manual drawing) is required for high quality delineation of individual brains. Further delineation of the brain substructures would lead to even more manual labor. Automated programs for various types of tissue boundary delineation do exist but they can only provide approximate results. For automated image analysis, voxel-based analyses (VBAs) have been widely used. Initially, the shape of each brain may be transformed to that of an atlas brain. Once all brain images are transformed to the atlas, voxel-by-voxel analyses can be performed. In this type of analysis, each voxel is treated as an independent entity. This approach has not proven to be effective for clinical purposes and there is a need in the art for an automatic means of high quality delineation of tissue boundary that may improve detection and characterization of tissue abnormalities from current radiological images.